THE INTIMATE PORTRAIT

The Intimate Portrait is the meeting point of two contemporary artists: New York-based Bill Travis, who combines a photographic portrait technique with oil painting in a highly refined way, and a young Roman artist, Chiara Abbaticchio, who expresses the richness of human reality in her work through strong and instinctive gestures.
Both artists succeed in forging images out of their most intimate, inner world.
Bill Travis, earned his doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and taught at the University of Michigan.
His essays on medieval art and symbolism have appeared in prestigious periodicals and this art-historical background gives his work an unusual character that recalls the great works of the past, while also addressing contemporary issues, such as visual ambiguity and sexuality.
Travis's exquisite sensibility in representing and, at the same time, concealing male bodies digs deep into the intimacy of the most aestheticizing and deliberately Classical masculine universe.
He has held many exhibitions in the United States, Argentina and Europe.

Chiara Abbaticchio, paints the female universe, projecting onto the canvas a great vital energy dictated by a violent, but also a sunny and positive, instinct.
In 2000 she received a special mention in the Stop al vandalismo grafico competition with her "Picasso l'avrebbe fatto?"; in the same year she won first prize for designing the symbol for Municipio X "Cinecitta'" Rome.
She was selected for the First Extemporary of Painting, "Il paesaggio urbano", and participated in the Sinaide Ghi International Competition of Painting and Watercolor with a work entitled "Lo scoglio".
A sketch of hers can be found at the Brazilian Embassy in Rome.
In 2001 she participated in the "In Vino Veritas" International Biennial of Humor in Art and the National Contest of Drawing and Humor.
In 2002 she participated in the Extemporary Painting Contest of "Trasimeno e Dintorni".